FARMINGTON – With hands deep in clay or guiding a paintbrush across a wooden panel, the large group of artists worked late Thursday afternoon in the art lab in the basement of Merrill Hall in preparation for an art exhibit like no other.
What will set this show apart is that the art pieces created by the two dozen or more artists working together are University of Maine at Farmington students from two different disciplines and community members with developmental, cognitive and intellectual disabilities.
In a unique class collaboration, students majoring in art or rehabilitation services programs joined forces with community members from LEAP, Work First, the High Hopes Club House of Waterville and the Austism Society of Maine program, for three art workshop sessions.
During the final session, the assignment was to create a two-sided mask or paint a four-sided panel displaying a dichotomous or polar opposite theme. Human traits such as happy-sad, beautiful-ugly; or the non-human dark-light, on-off, full-empty, were among the examples of ideas students posted up in the studio during the planning phase of the community workshops held earlier in the semester.
It was Jesse Potts, an assistant professor of art, who approached Karen Barrett, a professor of rehabilitation and Jewel Jones, an associate professor of the rehabilitation services program, with the idea combining classes with members of the community for an art project.
“He wanted to create this art connection and it turned out to be an amazing connection,” Barrett said and she added, “There are hidden artists in unlikely places.” Students in the art classes worked on project ideas while the rehabilitation services program students brought ideas of accessibility such as for someone who may need to work from a wheelchair or may have difficulty holding a paintbrush.
All of the students worked on an individual basis with the community members-explaining, suggesting, providing materials-each participant fully engaged in the art studio session.
Kaelee Tanner, a 2015 UMF graduate of the Rehabilitation Services Program who interned and found permanent employment at High Hopes Club House, a peer support program of Kennebec Behavioral Health, was contacted by her former professor, Barrett, to see if her clients would want to participate.
They sure did, Tanner said. Most of the first session’s participants asked to return for another session. On Thursday, the third and final workshop, the studio was packed with busy, creative artists.
“It’s neat to see the connection between the students and the community,” Barrett said smiling as she watched the interactions.
Tanner said she wished the sessions would have been held when she was a student.
“This would have been so helpful,” she said.
For Merle Tozier, who was busy creating a mask of clay to look like the famous ogre Shrek, “this is the first time I’ve worked with clay,” he said.
“Art can be therapeutic and be a means of providing visual communication,” Potts said.
The art work created from the workshops will be on exhibit at The Emery Community Arts Center on the UMF campus from Dec. 4-11. A public reception for the artists will be held 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 9. The public is encouraged to attend and meet the artists.
